Ultra HD Blu-ray Movie Reviews

With David Fincher at the helm and a clever script by James Vanderbilt, Zodiac tells its story thoughtfully, unhurriedly, and with a great specificity befitting one of the most notorious true-crime sagas in American history. From the late '60s and into the '70s, a serial killer terrorized Northern California, his brutal murders even more disturbing for the many handwritten letters and coded messages he mailed to San Francisco newspapers over the years. Catching him becomes a costly obsession for the police and an amateur sleuth (Jake Gyllenhaal) on his dangerous trail, and viewers should be reminded that real life doesn’t always have a happy ending.

Fincher and director of photography Harris Savides shot Zodiac on a combination of 35mm film and uncompressed 1080p digital video, yielding a 2K master. The new BD-100 4K disc is therefore an upscale of the theatrical cut, presented in Dolby Vision at a generous bitrate. The color grade is an unexpected improvement, hues elevated and diminished to help achieve a slightly surreal mood. Fine detail in elements such as grass and dirt are strong, but the blacks lack any real definition and I occasionally noticed a peculiar artifacting in the backgrounds of some scenes. The slightly longer director’s cut can be found on the second platter, an HD Blu-ray that—along with Disc 3, the supplements—appears identical in all ways to my 2009 standalone director’s cut set, except for the disc art.

Fincher’s go-to sound designer Ren Klyce does his usual outstanding job, the Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track adroitly balancing the dialogue with plentiful era pop songs and David Shires’s underrated original musical score. Standout flourishes include fireworks, gunshots, helicopters, rain and a brief but memorable trip to an especially creepy basement.

There’s no bonus content on the 4K disc, but the HD director’s cut carries the twin 2009 audio commentaries; one from the director, the other from Gyllenhaal, co-star Robert Downey Jr., Vanderbilt, producer Brad Fischer and author James Ellroy; both of which are worth a listen if you have the time. Disc 3 is not to be skipped either, neatly divided into “The Film” and “The Facts,” serving up three separate documentaries by David Prior, and still more. A single-vendor digital copy code is also provided. Crime buffs, Fincher-philes, fans of pre-Tony Stark RDJ or anyone who appreciates a well-crafted R-rated drama needs to check out Zodiac.

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Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray
Paramount Home Entertainment, 2007
ASPECT RATIO: 2.39:1
HDR FORMATS: Dolby Vision, HDR10
AUDIO FORMAT: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
LENGTH: 158 mins.
MPAA RATING: R
DIRECTOR: David Fincher
STARRING: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, John Carroll Lynch